Measure of My Days (3 page)

I wonder if we need be quite so dutiful. With one friend of my own age we cheerfully exchange the worst symptoms, and our black dreads as well. We frequently talk of death, for we are very alert to the experience of the unknown that may be so near and it is only to those of one’s own age that one can speak frankly. Talking of one’s health, which one wants to do, is generally full of risks. Ill health is unpleasant to most healthy people as it makes them feel helpless, threatened, and it can feel like an unjustified demand for
sympathy. Few believe in the pains of another, and if the person in pain has nothing to show, can forget the pain when interested, then where is the reality of it? In one’s self, where it ought to be kept I suppose. Disabilities crowd in on the old; real pain is there, and if we have to be falsely cheerful, it is part of our isolation.

Another secret we carry is that though drab outside—wreckage to the eye, mirrors a mortification—inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable. In silent, hot rebellion we cry silently—“I have lived my life haven’t I? What more is expected of me?” Have we got to pretend out of noblesse oblige that age is nothing, in order to encourage the others? This we do with a certain haughtiness, realising now that we have reached the place beyond resignation, a place I had no idea existed until I had arrived here.

It is a place of fierce energy. Perhaps passion would be a better word than energy, for the sad fact is this vivid life cannot be used. If I try to transpose it into action I am soon spent. It has
to be accepted as passionate life, perhaps the life I never lived, never guessed I had it in me to live. It feels other and more than that. It feels like the far side of precept and aim. It is just life, the natural intensity of life, and when old we have it for our reward and undoing. It can—at moments—feel as though we had it for our glory. Some of it must go beyond good and bad, for at times—though this comes rarely, unexpectedly—it is a swelling clarity as though all was resolved. It has no content, it seems to expand us, it does not derive from the body, and then it is gone. It may be a degree of consciousness which lies outside activity, and which when young we are too busy to experience.

I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. No precious energy goes in disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others, there is just yourself, just truth—a morsel—and you. You went through those long years when it was pain to be alone, now you have come out on the good side of that severe discipline. Alone you have your own way all day long, and you become
very natural. Perhaps this naturalness extends into heights and depths, going further than we know; as we cannot voice it we must just treasure it as the life that enriches our days.

I
mpossible to speak the truth
until you have contradicted yourself. Although I am absorbed in myself, a large part of me is constantly occupied with other people. I carry the thought of some almost as a baby too poorly to be laid down. There are many whom I never cease cherishing. I dwell on their troubles, their qualities, their possibilities as though I kept them safe by so doing; as though by understanding them I simplified their lives for them. I live with them every minute. I live by living with them. I dwell with the essence of friends so intensely that when they arrive I can be paralysed by the astonishing opacity of their actual presence.

W
e old people
are short tempered because we suffer so. We are stretched too far, our gamut is painfully wide. Little things have become big; nothing in us works well, our bodies have become unreliable. We have to make an effort to do the simplest things. We urge now this, now that part of our flagging bodies, and when we have spurred them to further functioning we feel clever and carefree. We stretch from such concerns as these into eternity where we keep one eye on death, certain of continuity, then uncertain, then indifferent.

We cannot read the papers with the response of those younger. We watch the playing for place in great issues, we hear war rumble, and we who have lived long still feel the wounds of two wars endured. We remember the cost; the difference in mood at the beginning of a war and at the end of a war. The initial pride that forbids man to accept an affront and later, when the immeasurable has been accepted by all, the dumb sense of wrong done by all to all. So the old are past comment
and almost past reaction, still knowing pity, but outside hope; also knowing—Oh here is the thing we cannot face again—that when man is set on a goal, destruction is nothing to him.

W
hen a new disability arrives
I look about to see if death has come, and I call quietly, “Death, is that you? Are you there?”. So far the disability has answered, “Don’t be silly, it’s me.”

T
he crucial task of age is balance
, a veritable tightrope of balance; keeping just well enough, just brave enough, just gay and interested and starkly honest enough to remain a sentient human being. On the day when we can boast none of this, we must be able to wait until the balance is restored. When we sink to nothingness we must remember that only yesterday our love was warm. I believe, indeed I know, that for some people life lights a
flame on the right shoulder, an accolade that may be for courage shown; when you are young the flame can leap because there is much life to be lived, and much need of fortitude. It can only burn faintly in age, but it may still be there. The old can supply little ardour, just the small amount we manage to create each day by our careful balancing. The flame may be unsteady but it can be clear, for it is still the greatness of being alive.

I
must be explicit.
The first dream I took to an analyst, many years ago, showed the three tall windows of his consulting room, windows almost from ceiling to floor. Outside them cosmic light streamed down. As this light is known, but no one knows what it is, there is no true name to give it. It is opaque light, very alive, moving, overpowering, and sparkling like a juicy apple when you bite deep.

It flowed down past the windows and I stood naked, barely able to endure the marvel. Then as
I sought shelter in the embrasure between two of the windows a small flame sprang to life on my right shoulder, and I knew it was an accolade.

If that happened to me, it has happened to others, and I take it as a fact of human experience.

I
n the landscape of the impersonal
there is always the loved individual. The individual is there and loved, but this may sharpen the pain for the old. It is the long stretch of time that gives us our viewpoint. We have watched generation follow generation, and we see the same qualities in grandparents, parents, and children working the same sad havoc. We saw the same wounds we see now caused in a like manner long ago. We would like to warn and teach, but we have learned that it is almost useless. In the course of our lives we have amassed too much data for sharp sorrow; and if we have just as much reason for pity to have dulled, who wants pity? So how carry it?

A
lways, through everything
, I try to straighten my spine, or my soul. They both ought to be upright I feel, for pride, for style, for reality’s sake, but both tend to bend as under a weight that has been carried a long time. I try to lighten my burden by knowing it, I try to walk lightly, and sometimes I do, for sometimes I feel both light and proud. At other times I am bent, bent.

T
his morning when I woke
and knew that I had had a fair night, that my pains were not too bad, I lay waiting for the uplifting moment when I pull back the curtains, see the sky, and I surprised myself by saying out loud: “My dear, dear days.”

P
ersonal immortality
may not matter at all. Perhaps our long insistence on it has been our need of spiritual value, and a groping conviction that this is our central truth; that we have a share in
impersonal greatness. We belie it daily, but is it not possible that by living our lives we create something fit to add to the store from which we came? Our whole duty may be to clarify and increase what we are, to make our consciousness a finer quality. The effort of one’s entire life would be needed if we are to return laden to our source.

We may well fear that we will bring too small a gift, that we garner little. But are we fit judges, and out of travail and ignorance and loss, may we not create a kernel of gold that we dare not know, but which will be claimed?

I must ask myself, “What have I to become immortal? Not my beloved ego, none of that. And the spirit in us that is truly there, is that not already immortal?” Some rare people may have a special role to play, and they may remain themselves after death, but how worthy of immortality are most of us? We have to believe we have value, we could not have courage otherwise, and our sense of being more than ourselves is our most precious possession. It is in honour of this feeling that we endure and try. Even the most
meagre life will have a wealth of patience, a treasure of endurance, immeasurable courage and cheer, and kindness culled from laborious days, and these are surely gifts worthy of return.

A
ge is a desert of time
—hours, days, weeks, years perhaps—with little to do. So one has ample time to face everything one has had, been, done; gather them all in: the things that came from outside, and those from inside. We have time at last to make them truly ours.

When I was a child I went with my grandfather when he hunted wild turkey, or quail, driving through the roadless woods under great water oaks shining as though newly washed by rain. Once on reaching a river I jumped from the waggon and running into the deep shade sat down on a large alligator, taking it for a half-buried log. I was also the child who walked out on a plank placed as a pier to reach the centre of the dark pool, then knelt, plunged in her hands to
scoop up a drink, and saw that fatal snake, a water moccasin, dart between her closing hands.

You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours: When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, lived, balanced, over?

L
ove opens double gates on suffering.
The pain of losing good is the measure of its goodness. Parting is impoverishment. Reason gives no solace. The going away of someone loved is laceration. But courage, love, understanding, pity, sensitivity, all our glories almost break us. Then suffer. It is all I can do. But how carry it? Do not complain, much worse might come so easily. But I cannot just suffer, so I grope for a way of dealing with it, wondering how best to grasp it, searching for any insight that might help.

I know that bad as it seems for me, no good in it for me at all, the parting will bring new interest
to those I am losing. I can do nothing—love and suffering are the same.

When I have looked at every side sorrow begins to be sorrow for the inscrutable sorrow of life. I sorrow over distance, just distance, with its power of annulling those far away. If I could only see far ahead, assess what will happen, but I can do nothing. So I ape a false cheer, and gradually my sorrow becomes a dumb facing of Fate, until sickened by acceptance I feel a change taking place. A hint comes of some melting or hardening—which is it?—and at last I reach an inner citadel where there is a wounded quiet, knowing strength.

Have I only given up protest and comment because I could not do less, or other? In that inner place, indefinable, but not an illusion, do I just capitulate? This may be so, must be so, but it feels otherwise. Perhaps near the core of our being—are we ever near that unknowable centre?—one is beyond pain and pleasure. Is it possible that we approach the place where they are one? Is this to say—“Thy will be done”?

O
ur sorrow is suck a burden
for others. If it were possible it might be best to show nothing, and this is often tried with arid results, for it is unreal, inhuman. You express some of your unhappiness, partly to rid yourself of a little, and partly because honesty itself demands some expression. Expressing sorrow helps you to take it in, to know it better. But soon, soon you must claim it as your own, relieving others of its weight, so that they can say happily, “Better today? All right now?” It is what they need to say, and you must answer brightly, “All right, thank you.”

Dr. Johnson said that telling one’s troubles was asking for pity or praise. Very good. You often need and deserve both pity and praise. Perhaps you need to share your weakness. That too is likely. But it is more than that. You ask to be met at the point of your reality.

When you have to accept loss, you know you are retreating on to less and less territory. The play of your heart will be restricted, the area of
your interest lessened. The territory of the old is very small, and it hurts to diminish. When you reach this mute place you have no need to speak. It is no longer possible; and because you are cornered you are somehow saved. It is again the inner citadel, and unable to state it, incapable of in any way describing it, you only know that there in that one place is the relief of quiet.

T
he equal-ended cross
surrounded by a circle, a pattern found in many countries, is taken as the oldest symbol of completeness, of integration. Our consciousness splits life into qualities, and so we know the tension of opposites, the basic differentiation. But the opposites are also the cross and you; if steadfast enough we may feel the stillness at the centre, and if acceptance is possible, our own arms encircle us and we contain our pain.

Does life, or God, what is the difference, build us with accepted experience, stab by stab of accepted
understanding? As though each joy or sorrow is God, or life, saying, “You see?” and we are needed, not forced, to say truly, “I see”. It is like anaesthetic revelations in
Varieties of Religious Experience
when the inadequately drugged patient felt the knife, and at each cut she saw God enabled to make a bend in the path on which He walked. When we know He can.